Snakes
One of the things that Sao Paulo is famous for is the Butantan Institute where hundreds of thousand of remedies for snake bites and other infections are created. We visited this world-famous institute and its museums recently where they have over 60,000 live and bottled snakes from all over the world. 
This was the largest live snake at the institute. This boa constrictor was about 13 feet long and unlike most of the snakes there, was quite active.
The famous "snake pit" was a bit of a disappointment as we had visions of Indiana Jones in our minds...but there were enough snakes to make anyone who doesn't like them to get that "crawly skin" feeling. We had a very nice day at Butantan. We even got to see some monkeys, although we weren't able to get very close to them.
Our car
It came to my attention that we never showed you what our car looks like. I took some pictures just after it was washed so you all could "ooh" and "ahh" over it...just kidding. It's a 1997 VW Quantum. There's no such thing in North America but the closest comparison would be a Ford Taurus wagon made by Volkswagen. I'd take my old (running) 1989 Volvo 740 Turbo over this car any day, but hey, it works! It's a standard (as most cars here are) but it has air conditioning, which is a real bonus here. We're working on getting Shannon licensed to drive here as her license expired as we were moving away from PEI. You can make that a prayer request if you'd like. It's a minor thing, but it's been much more difficult to get than we anticipated.
Ibirapuera Park
Although Sao Paulo is a big, ugly city in many ways, it does have some nice parks. The largest of all parks in the city is Ibirapuera (ee-beera-PWAY-ra). It is an enormous park (which is good since thousands and thousands of people go there every day.) On of the coolest things about the park is that they rent all sorts of bicycles by the hour. We got a bicycle built for two (romantic but uncomfortable) and we saw just about every other kind of bike you can imagine there -- they even had an eight-seater! We had a great day at the park with our picnic lunch. July has turned out to be much warmer this year than last (so I'm told.) We've been enjoying temperatures in July that are very similar to the temperatures in PEI (minus the wind). We have been missing all of our friends back in North America, and we talk often about what we will do next July when we return to see everybody.
July 4th in Brazil
Although only one of us is officially American by birth, four of us are American citizens. One of the teachers had the idea to have a barbecue at his "sitiu" (SEE-chew) [which is like a summer home- only this is their year-round home.] We were pleased to be invited over, and what a pleasant surprise we got! They live just outside the city line in a neighbouring city of a couple of million people. They have about forty acres of land with horses, a soccer field, basketball court, and their own beach! We had to take two ferries to get there, but it was amzing to find such an oasis in this mega-city.
Of course, we ate a lot. Everyone got a chance to ride the horses, and to end the festivities we even set off a few fireworks. It was another great day to make our "winter" vacation memorable.
Coming back to Sao Paulo
As we packed up to leave on Saturday morning we were visited by this local cat who laid the charm on us big-time to get some treats. It worked!
After eleven hours of driving we were hungry, sore, uncomfortable, and grouchy (not to mention dizzy). Our spirits were lifted significantly when we saw that next to the McDonalds we were going to eat at there was a Dunkin' Donuts!! We've never seen a Dunkin' Donuts here and Shannon had recently commented about how much she was missing Tim Horton's coffee. It wasn't a "real" Dunkin' Donuts--they only had 8 donuts in the whole store! But they were the real deal! We paid R$3.60 ($1.80 Cdn) for ONE donut (now you know why they only had 8) just so we could say we had one. We all shared it too. Shannon got her coffee (half the size of a Tim Horton's small coffee--large by Brazilian standards) and she was on the doorstep of heaven. It was such a momentous event that we got the guy who pumped our gas to take a picture of us all in front of the store.
A boat trip
The highlight of our vacation was a boat ride around half of the peninsula of Buzios. There were only about a dozen people on the boat, and the weather was just about perfect.
Summer and Cary each got their pictures taken with their hands at the wheel. Of course, the boat wasn't moving when they let them take control! We also met a nice, older Jewish couple from Sweden during this trip. The man showed us the tattoo on his arm from when he was marked by the Germans to go to Auswitz. We were all pretty amazed. We had a good chat and I think we helped them feel a little better about "Christians" in general.
Not everyone had a great time on the trip. Sydney spent the last half of the trip lying down trying to sleep it away - to no avail. The rest of us had a great time, though. Shannon and Kilah even went for a swim right from the boat. Definitely a good day!
Downtown Buzios
When the weather turns cloudy and you can't lie on the beach, what do you do? Go shopping of course! (At least if you're a woman.) We didn't buy much, but we did a lot of looking. This picture was taken outside a store window with Shannon and the girls inside. A neat effect, don't you think? 
Along the "Orla Bordot" was this group of statues in the water. They were very realistic-looking, as you can tell.
The Orla Bordot is so-called because it was here that Brigitte Bardot made these beaches famous in one of her movies. They made a statue of her sitting along the boardwalk overlooking the ocean. I couldn't resist the opportunity to get cozy with Brigitte. Shannon was rolling her eyes as she took this picture.
I couldn't resist putting this picture on the blog. Shannon has just purchased this blazer moments beforehand and seemed quite pleased with her purchase. Isn't she beautiful? Shannon turns thirty-something this month, and I'm convinced that she's more beautiful today than she was the day I met her.
The beaches
The beaches in Buzios were truly world-class. Our beach at the resort was not the most impressive of the beaches we saw, but it was certainly the least crowded, with no more than 20 people there at any one time.
Although the swimming at our beach was not so good, we were able to experience coconut juice directly from the coconut. They sold these at a booth right on the beach. It was actually quite good.
We were also intrigued by the sand crabs we found on the beach. These white-gloved little guys were ready to fight if you caught them too far from their little hole in the sand.
The weather during the middle of the week was windy and overcast with occasional rain; so lying around on the beach was not an option, but exploring new beaches was still a fun experience. This was the most famous beach on the peninsula of Buzios, but it certainly isn't the nicest. In fact, it looked like it had been shut down for the winter.
Another picture of the same beach. The postcard people must have a heyday in this town.
This beach was one of our most frustrating experiences of the week. We came on an overcast day, but we could see that the clouds were going to leave. When we got to the beach, the beach was quite empty--of tourist, that is. There were more people selling things on the beach than there were people to buy them. To make matters worse, the beach was lined by restaurants with vendors trying to get you to spend $100 on lunch (Buzios is not a cheap town!) Obviously, we weren't having any of that, but the vendors would not leave us alone. Finally, when the restaurant guy realized we weren't going to eat at his restaurant, he told us that we would have to pay for the rental of the beach chairs we were using (a lie). He watched us like a hawk until we left, then insisted we pay. It wasn't worth the hastle to argue with him, and our Portuguese isn't that good yet anyway. So we gave him his money and were glad to leave this beautiful, but unwelcoming beach.
In Buzios
Here are pictures of the resort we stayed at in Buzios. The first picture is of the apartment units like the one we stayed in. The second is the view from our apartment overlooking the beach. Although it is officially winter here, the temperatures ranged between 14 and 25 celcius. The place we stayed at was definitely not up to North American resort standards. The place didn't have cable TV, a vcr or dvd player, or even a clock. However, the housekeeper washed our dishes every day and pleased the kids by creatively arranging their stuffed animals.
We lost!
Since everybody seems to want to know what the reaction here has been to Brazil's defeat in the World Cup tournament, here you go...Actually, the Brazilians we know and in this area in general are handling it very well. They are terribly disappointed, but unlike North Americans who would analyze for days all the reasons why our team got ripped off, they simply accept it. They have a basic "We lost this time. We'll try again next time." People have gone back to business as usual as if Brazil was never even in the World Cup...amazing.
We're ho-ome!
Our vaction in Buzios is over and we arrived home safely on Saturday night. The next few posts will be about our trip.
One of the most impressive parts of the trip was the trip itself. We took the car to save a lot of money on transportation. There are two main roads between Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. We took the express route first and the scenic route on the way back. These pictures are from the EXPRESS route. Suffice it to say that Shannon is no longer all that concerned about seeing the Cabot Trail. There were so many "Kodak moments" that by the end of the trip we were almost numb to it all. Brazil is indeed a beautiful place.
Rio is really an amazing city. Most of it looks like Sao Paulo, but the part next to the ocean is spectacular. We look forward to going to Rio as a destination sometime as it does seem to be as beautiful as everyone raves that it is.Although we saved a lot of money by driving, we sure didn't save a lot of time. The express route took us about eight hours to drive. The scenic road back home took us over thirteen. The road along the coast was so windy that Cary literally started to feel dizzy when he got out of the car at a rest stop. We will NEVER take that road again if we can avoid it, despite the beauty to be seen along the way. Also, we take back what we said about there not being lombadas (speed bumps) on the highways. We must have crossed 100 lombadas (at least) on the windy highway back to Sao Paulo.